Cicero (105-43 B.C.): Life, Career, Writings, Legacy | Early European History And Religion

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CICERO (105-43 B.C.)

Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) was a famous Roman statesman, orator and writer known for his rhetorical style and eloquence. The scholar Micheal Lind wrote in the Washington Post, “No great mind in Western history “not Socrates, Plato or Aristotle — has influenced so many other great minds, Ciceronian eloquence was incorporated into Christianity by St. Augustine and St. Jerome...Machiavelli sought to revive the the republican political tradition of Cicero...The United States — more than even France — is a Ciceronian state."

Cicero is regarded as the greatest of Roman orators and the chief master of Latin prose style. His ideas were important in the development of American democracy. Cicero is credited with introducing Greek philosophy to Rome and originating the idea of checks and balances. Cicero once said, "Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain always a child." For a long time schoolchildren were required to memorize his speeches. Many that had to do this recall Cicero as a pompous, long-winded bore. Now he is all but forgotten outside the history and Classics communities.

Cicero was tall and thin. He was a devoted father and enjoyed collecting books and paintings. He was committed to restoring traditional political values but was not great purveyor of the values he extolled. He once was charged with rigging a provincial lottery and other times was accused of hiring street toughs to settle matters. He divorced the woman who bore his children so he could marry a teenager from a wealthy, influential family. When Caesar was assassinated, Cicero saw visions of the old republican government revived once more, and delivered his fierce philippics against Antony; but upon the coalition of Octavius and Antony, was proscribed by Antony and killed by the latter's soldiers.

Websites on Ancient Rome: Plutarch (c.46-c.120 CE): Life of Cicero, MIT Classics classics.mit.edu; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; Lacus Curtius penelope.uchicago.edu; The Internet Classics Archive classics.mit.edu ; Bryn Mawr Classical Review bmcr.brynmawr.edu; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org; Ancient Rome resources for students from the Courtenay Middle School Library web.archive.org ; History of ancient Rome OpenCourseWare from the University of Notre Dame web.archive.org ; United Nations of Roma Victrix (UNRV) History unrv.com

Book: “Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician” by Anthony Everitt (Random House, 2002)

Cicero’s Life

The eldest son of an equestrian — though not noble — family, Cicero was born in the small town was born at Arpinum on January 3, 106 B.C. Cicero's father, who was a man of property, moved to Rome when Cicero was a child. Educated in Rome and in Greece the future statesman received an elaborate education in rhetoric, law, and philosophy, studying and practising under some of the most noted teachers of the time.

Young Cicero
José Miguel Baños wrote in National Geographic History: His family name originated from the nickname cicer, the Latin word for “chickpea.” Writing of Cicero about a century after his death, Greek historian Plutarch believed the name came from an ancestor who had a dent in his nose resembling the cleft of a chickpea. Cicero’s family was wealthy but did not belong to the patrician class, the aristocracy of Rome. The equestrian class sat below the patricians and above the plebeians, the working class of the republic. His family had strong military connections, but not the political ones necessary for the career in government desired by Cicero.[Source José Miguel Baños, National Geographic History, February 26, 2019]

Cicero aimed to scale the political ladder as quickly as possible. He would do so as a novus homo, new man, a term which signified that his family did not come from the ruling class. Cicero served briefly in the military before turning to a career in law. He tried his first case in 81 B.C., and then successfully defended a man accused of parricide—a bright beginning to Cicero’s public life. Marriage at age 27 into a wealthy family brought him the necessary funds to continue to rise. After he wed in 79 B.C., Cicero’s career took off, and he rapidly rose through the ranks. He was elected quaestor in 75, praetor in 66, and consul in 63, the highest political office in the republic. Cicero was one of the youngest ever to reach that high office.

“In 46 B.C. he divorced his wife Terentia, to whom he had been married for thirty years, and married the young and wealthy Publilia in order to relieve himself from financial difficulties; but her also he shortly divorced. Caesar, who had now become supreme in Rome, was assassinated in 44 B.C., and though Cicero was not a sharer in the conspiracy, he seems to have approved the deed. In the confusion which followed he supported the cause of the conspirators against Antony; and when finally the triumvirate of Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus was established, Cicero was included among the proscribed, and on December 7, 43 B.C., he was killed by agents of Antony. His head and hand were cut off and exhibited at Rome.

Cicero’s Early Career

Cicero began his career as an advocate at the age of twenty-five, and almost immediately came to be recognized not only as a man of brilliant talents but also as a courageous upholder of justice in the face of grave political danger. After two years of practice he left Rome to travel in Greece and Asia, taking all the opportunities that offered to study his art under distinguished masters. He returned to Rome greatly improved in health and in professional skill. [Source: “Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero, with his treatises on friendship and old age; translated by E. S. Shuckburgh. New York, P. F. Collier, 1909, The Harvard classics v.9.]

Through his powers of persuasion and without much money, he rose to the highest echelons of Roman government. By the age of 35 Cicero had established himself as the premier courtroom orator of his time. At thirty-two he was elected quaestor to Sicily, and because of his integrity while holding this magistracy, was soon afterwards chosen by the Sicilians to prosecute their former governor Verres for extortion. Cicero was curule aedile in 69 B.C., praetor urbanus in 66 B.C. In this year he supported Pompey for the eastern command, and the two never quite ceased to be friends. Cicero was consul in 63 B.C., and put down the conspiracy of Catiline. [Source: Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., “The Library of Original Sources” (Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co., 1907), Vol. III: The Roman World, pp. 216-241]

“Sulla's constitution had been gradually changing since his death, and Cicero slowly came to side with the optimates as against the populares and to try to carry the equestrians with him. He might have been a member of the "First Triumvirate" but perhaps preferred the existing institutions to such high-handed measures. In 58 B.C. he was exiled through the efforts of the demagogue Publius Clodius, but was recalled the next year. When civil war broke out between Caesar and Pompey, Cicero tried to side with neither, but at length joined Pompey's army in Epirus. After the defeat of the latter at Pharsalus, Cicero, whom sickness had kept from the battle, returned to Italy and sought pardon of Caesar.

Cicero as a Lawyer

In addition to being an influential politician, Cicero was also the most celebrated defense lawyer of his time — a Roman Johnny Cochran or F. Lee Bailey if you will. He was famous for winning shaky cases with his extraordinary persuasive skills. He once won a Greek poet Roman citizenship, even though he had documents to prove it, by waxing eloquently about contributions poets make to society. Cicero once said, "We are brought in not to say what we stand by in our own opinions, but what is called for by circumstances and the case itself" and if necessary "to pour darkness over the judges."

The path open for political honors to a "new man" was through the law. Cicero pleaded his first case at 26 . The next year he successfully defended Publius Sextus Roscius against the favorite of Sulla, the dictator, and thought it best, during the rest of Sulla's dictatorship, to travel for his education and his health.

Cicero pioneered standard defense tactics such as the praeterito (a technique in which the lawyer condemns his opponents while he insists he doing no such thing) and the ad misericordiam (an appeal of pity in which the defendants crying wife and malnourished children were positioned in front of the jury box). If Ciceros client was childless he would hire some homeless children to play the part. In the classic example of a praeterito, the lawyer would say he wants the jury to make their decision based totally on evidence and the fact that the prosecutor cheats on wife and is cruel to his dog.

Cicero as a Politician

Cicero hailed as a hero along with Alexander the Great

Cicero became the first member his family to become a Senator. He soon established himself in the Roman Senate as its master orator and quickly rose through the ranks. In 63 B.C. he took the position of the consulship, the highest Roman office. The day before he had escaped an assassination attempt at the hands of conspirators plotting to overthrow the government.

After taking his seat Cicero as consul, he rose up and addressed his main political rival, Catiline, whom Cicero had just defeated in an election for the consultship: “How long, O Catiline will you abuse your patience? To what lengths will your unbridled audacity carry you? Do you not see that your conspiracy is known to all here? Long ago, Catiline, you ought to have been led forth to execution." Catiline tried to reply. But he was drowned out with cries of “traitor." As he and his followers fled. Some of the followers were grabbed by a mob and killed. Catiline died not long after in a battle.

Cicero was at the height of his power at this time but his reign was brief. He overextended himself by using his power in the Senate to issue death threats that were carried out. He was charged with misuse of power and was banished in 58 B.C. He was allowed to return the next year but never again had the same power or influence.

Cicero did little of consequence during Caesar's rise to power and was unable to do much to halt the demise of the republic. He had a bit of a swan song after Caesar assassination when he placed himself at the head of the Republican party and denounced Marc Antony in a series of famous speech called the “Philippics." When Antony became leader he had Cicero executed for these speeches. According to Plutarch Cicero was taken by a death squad as he attempted to flee to Macedonia. His head and hands were cut off displayed in the Forum, where Antony's wife Fulvia — who Cicero said Antony married for her money — used her hairpins to pierce the tongue of the man who so caustically denounced her husband.

Cicero’s Political Career

In 76 B.C. Cicero was elected to the office of quaestor. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh wrote: “He was assigned to the province of Lilybaeum in Sicily, and the vigor and justice of his administration earned him the gratitude of the inhabitants. It was at their request that he undertook in 70 B.C. the prosecution of Verres, who as praetor had subjected the Sicilians to incredible extortion and oppression; and his successful conduct of this case, which ended in the conviction and banishment of Verres, may be said to have launched him on his political career. He became aedile in the same year, in 67 B.C. praetor, and in 64 B.C. was elected consul by a large majority. The most important event of the year of his consulship was the conspiracy of Catiline. This notorious criminal of patrician rank had conspired with a number of others, many of them young men of high birth but dissipated character, to seize the chief offices of the state, and to extricate themselves from the pecuniary and other difficulties that had resulted from their excesses, by the wholesale plunder of the city. The plot was unmasked by the vigilance of Cicero, five of the traitors were summarily executed, and in the overthrow of the army that had been gathered in their support Catiline himself perished. Cicero regarded himself as the savior of his country, and his country for the moment seemed to give grateful assent. [Source: “Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero, with his treatises on friendship and old age; translated by E. S. Shuckburgh. New York, P. F. Collier, 1909, The Harvard classics v.9.]

“But reverses were at hand. During the existence of the political combination of Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus, known as the first triumvirate, P. Clodius, an enemy of Cicero's, proposed a law banishing "any one who had put Roman citizens to death without trial." This was aimed at Cicero on account of his share in the Catiline affair, and in March, 58 B.C., he left Rome. The same day a law was passed by which he was banished by name, and his property was plundered and destroyed, a temple to Liberty being erected on the site of his house in the city. During his exile Cicero's manliness to some extent deserted him. He drifted from place to place, seeking the protection of officials against assassination, writing letters urging his supporters to agitate for his recall, sometimes accusing them of lukewarmness and even treachery, bemoaning the ingratitude of his country or regretting the course of action that had led to his outlawry, and suffering from extreme depression over his separation from his wife and children and the wreck of his political ambitions.

Cicero speaking before the Senate

Finally, in August, 57 B.C., the decree for his restoration was passed, and he returned to Rome the next month, being received with immense popular enthusiasm. During the next few years the renewal of the understanding among the triumvirs shut Cicero out from any leading part in politics, and he resumed his activity in the law courts, his most important case being, perhaps, the defense of Milo for the murder of Clodius, Cicero's most troublesome enemy. This oration, in the revised form in which it has come down to us, is ranked as among the finest specimens of the art of the orator, though in its original form it failed to secure Milo's acquittal. Meantime, Cicero was also devoting much time to literary composition, and his letters show great dejection over the political situation, and a somewhat wavering attitude towards the various parties in the state.

In 51 B.C. he went to Cilicia in Asia Minor as proconsul, an office which he administered with efficiency and integrity in civil affairs and with success in military. He returned to Italy at the end of the following year, and he was publicly thanked by the senate for his services, but disappointed in his hopes for a triumph. The war for supremacy between Caesar and Pompey, which had for some time been gradually growing more certain, broke out in 49 B.C., when Caesar led his army across the Rubicon, and Cicero after much irresolution threw in his lot with Pompey, who was overthrown the next year in the battle of Pharsalus and later murdered in Egypt. Cicero returned to Italy, where Caesar treated him magnanimously, and for some time he devoted himself to philosophical and rhetorical writing. The most important orations of the last months of his life were the fourteen "Philippics" delivered against Antony, and the price of this enmity he paid with his life.

Cicero's Writings, Speeches and Thoughts

More writings of Cicero survive than of any other Latin author. These include around 900 letters. Among them are letters to almost every famous person in Rome who lived during his time. They also provided an invaluable look at everyday life in Rome. Cicero is also famous for his speeches. About 60 of Cicero's speeches remain. They are regarded as some of the most eloquent speeches ever written. Numerous philosophical and rhetorical treatises and poetry have also survived.

Cicero's made Latin into an art form. His speeches and prose were so eloquent and stirring that “Ciceronian” became synonymous with “classically perfect," “persuasive” and “polished." The Oxford classic professor J.W. Mackail wrote: “Cicero's unique and imperishable glory is that he created the language of the civilized world, and used that language to create a style which 19 centuries have not replaced, and in some respects have hardly altered."

Cicero

Evelyn S. Shuckburgh wrote: “To his contemporaries Cicero was primarily the great forensic and political orator of his time, and the fifty-eight speeches which have come down to us bear testimony to the skill, wit, eloquence, and passion which gave him his preeminence. But these speeches of necessity deal with the minute details of the occasions which called them forth, and so require for their appreciation a full knowledge of the history, political and personal, of the time. The letters, on the other hand, are less elaborate both in style and in the handling of current events, while they serve to reveal his personality, and to throw light upon Roman life in the last days of the Republic in an extremely vivid fashion. [Source: “Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero, with his treatises on friendship and old age; translated by E. S. Shuckburgh, New York, P. F. Collier, 1909, The Harvard classics v.9.]

“Cicero as a man, in spite of his self-importance, the vacillation of his political conduct in desperate crises, and the whining despondency of his times of adversity, stands out as at bottom a patriotic Roman of substantial honesty, who gave his life to check the inevitable fall of the commonwealth to which he was devoted. The evils which were undermining the Republic bear so many striking resemblances to those which threaten the civic and national life of America today that the interest of the period is by no means merely historical.

“As a philosopher, Cicero's most important function was to make his countrymen familiar with the main schools of Greek thought. Much of this writing is thus of secondary interest to us in comparison with his originals, but in the fields of religious theory and of the application of philosophy to life he made important first-hand contributions. From these works has been selected the following treatise, On Friendship, which has proved of most permanent and widespread interest to posterity, and which gives a clear impression of the way in which a high-minded Roman thought about some of the main problems of human life.”

Selected Writings by Cicero
Cicero: Selected Letters. 3 selected letters.Internet Ancient History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu
Cicero: On Friendship, or Laelius, full text, trans by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh Internet Ancient History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu
Cicero: On Friendship, or Laelius, full text, trans by W. Melmoth Internet Ancient History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu
Cicero: Old Age, c. 5 BCE (Harvard Classics series)Internet Ancient History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu
Cicero: On the Laws, excerpts from Books II and III Internet Ancient History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu
Cicero: On the Republic, excerpts from Book I Internet Ancient History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu
Cicero: On the Republic: Scipio's Dream, excerpts from Book VI Internet Ancient History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu
Cicero: The Second Philippic Internet Ancient History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu
Cicero: On the Genres of Rhetoric. excerpts from various texts sourcebooks.fordham.edu

Imperium and Conspirata, Novels with Cicero as Their Central Character

In a review of the novel Conspirata , Frank Bruni wrote in the New York Times, “Cicero must regularly foil death threats, his vestibule patrolled by a fearsome guard dog; his front door barricaded against invaders; and his wife, Terentia, alternately moping about the danger and questioning his response to it. Many of his supposed allies are really wolves in sheep's togas, and the spies Cicero plants in enemy camps sometimes prove cowardly or inconveniently mortal. One, a woman, winds up gutted like a fish. While they were sharp with words around the Roman Senate, they were even sharper with daggers. [Source: Frank Bruni, New York Times, February 16, 2010 ==]

“Will Cicero survive, entrails intact? What of the Republic he governs? History buffs can already answer those questions, so it's to Robert Harris's considerable credit that he wrings some suspense from them, producing a fact-based novel that's deliciously juicy and fleetly paced — maybe too fleetly, all told: the comically foreboding title foreshadows Harris's principal intentions, which are to make you gasp, titter and turn the pages. This you will surely do, but with an engagement limited by an occasional sense of silly overkill. ==

““Conspirata? is a sequel to the bestselling novel “Imperium” and part of what is intended to be a trilogy devoted to the power games played by Cicero and a few contemporaries whose names just might strike a bell: Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompey, Marcus Antonius. “Imperium” traced the rise of Cicero from cunning lawyer to crafty consul, or senior magistrate, of Rome. Reviewing the book in these pages in 2006, Marcel Theroux noted that the portrait of its protagonist variously brought to mind Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, and that Harris seemed to be holding up “a distant mirror of the politics of our own age." ==

“Conspirata” is less pointed than that, the political stratagems it recounts so rococo and dastardly they would make Karl Rove quiver and James Carville blush. It's precisely that outlandishness that makes ancient Rome so attractive to Harris and legions of others. The reader meets Pompeius and Pomptinus, Roscius and Rabirius, Servius and Sulpicius and — my favorite — Valerius Flaccus, whose name sounds like an ailment so embarrassing you're loath to tell even your doctor about it. Keeping the characters and their alliances straight isn't easy, even with the help of the glossary in the back, and Harris muddles things further by assuming a reader's familiarity with the basic architecture and processes of Roman government. ==

But he's a bluntly efficient storyteller, aware that what works at the start of an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” can also set his tale in motion. And so, in the first sentence, there's the body of an adolescent boy pulled from the Tiber, throat slashed and internal organs missing, suggesting a human sacrifice. In due time Harris reveals what happened and why, but “Conspirata” is less a mystery or crime procedural than a gubernatorial and legislative chess match, narrated, as was “Imperium," by Cicero's secretary, Tiro. Tiro employs a tone at once grandiose and wry — this is one jaunty epic — and serves as a fly on the frescoed wall, inserting himself into the narrative only occasionally, as when he avails himself of a tryst with a Greek slave girl named Agathe. “Here is my philosophy," she tells him, the seductress as Socrates. “Enjoy such brief ecstasy as the gods permit us, for it is only in these moments that men and women are truly not alone." The togetherness that follows isn't detailed. “Conspirata” pays more attention to the gutting than to the rutting.

The novel is concerned most of all, though, with calculation; it's a serial chronicle of the binds Cicero encounters — most notably a welling insurrection, spearheaded by Lucius Sergius Catilina — and how he shimmies his way out of them. And it's lavish with classical oratory, reproducing windy, eloquent, absorbing Senate debates. A passage in which the senators discuss the possible execution of a band of traitors is rousingly good.

Book: “Conspirata” by Robert Harris (Simon & Schuster, 2010)

Cicero’s Legacy and Impact

José Miguel Baños wrote in National Geographic History: Cicero inspired generations of philosophers, especially those of the Enlightenment such as John Locke, David Hume, and Montesquieu, who stated that “Cicero is, of all the ancients, the one who had the most personal merit, and whom I would most prefer to resemble.” He was a guiding light for the U.S. Founding Fathers. In 1744 Benjamin Franklin published M. T. Cicero’s Cato Major, or His Discourse of Old-Age, the first classic work translated and printed in the colonies. Thomas Jefferson drew on Cicero’s ideas when drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776. John Adams idolized Cicero, citing him in his 1787 A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America: “As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have greater weight.” [Source José Miguel Baños, National Geographic History, February 26, 2019]

When asked which Roman she would most like to dine with, the renowned Cambridge classic professor Mary Beard told Smithsonian magazine:“Cicero would be my first choice. Despite the great novels by Robert Harris, he has a modern rep as a fearful old bore; but the Romans thought he was the wittiest man ever. (Cicero's problem, they said, was that he just couldn't stop cracking gags.) To sit next to him, I'd hope for the empress Livia — I don't believe the allegations of her poisoning habits. And a massage artist from some grand set of Roman baths, who would surely have the best stories to tell of all. [Source: Smithsonian magazine, November 9, 2015]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024